Soren Kierkegaard

indeed, unconditionally—most people will only be harmed by reading Ad-
ler’s writings because he causes total confusion. But the person who pos-
sesses what Adler lacks—dialectical clarity about the [individual] spheres
and about the totality—he and he alone will truly be able to learn something
from a single brilliant, lively, edifying, moving, and at times profound utter-
ance.” In plain language (and, it is true, with a bit of reading between the
lines) Kierkegaard here maintains that he has had privileged access to an
understanding of Adler. He knows something that others do not know, “he
and he alone” has learned something which other people have no basis to
comprehend.
Other reviewers went about their task more straightforwardly, however.
Thus, in July 1846 Frederik Helveg wrote a lengthy piece in theDanish
Church Timesin which he reviewed Adler’s latest four books, comparing
them with—Kierkegaard’s work. Helveg duly noted an “opposition” be-
tween the two writers, but he also found “a striking similarity... on certain
points.” This was particularly clear in matters of style.
Kierkegaard was in the middle of writing his book on Adler when
Helveg’s review appeared, and he read it immediately. It irritated him to
be compared with Adler, all the more because in his view the similarity
cited by Helveg was owing exclusively to the fact that Adler had plagiarized
his pseudonyms, in particular Frater Taciturnus, to whose “stylistic form”
Adler had merely added a chaotic and unartistic ferocity. This was both true
and not true: Adler’s writings prior to 1843 had adhered to a dry, academic,
often polemical but never elegant style, while after 1843 his presentations
were aphoristic and unusually rich in metaphor. It is known that Adler had
readOn the Concept of Irony,Either/Or,The Concept of Anxiety,Philosophical
Fragments, and presumably thePostscriptas well, but Kierkegaard’s suspicion
that Adler had simply plagiarized him is probably unjustified, if only because
of the dates of publication of the various works involved.
If Kierkegaard nonetheless felt himself a victim of plagiarism, it was be-
cause he could recognize his own style in Adler’s. It is thus very revealing
that in the earliest sketches of the book on Adler, which were completed
beforeHelveg’s review appeared, Kierkegaard was much more positive in his
assessment of Adler as a stylist than he wasafterthe appearance of the review.
Beforethe review appeared, Kierkegaard wrote that Adler “is not without
lyricism, stylistic felicity, not without profundity,” and he could almost guar-
antee that Adler had not “made any effort to attach himself to the pseud-
onyms.”Afterthe review appeared, Kierkegaard had the opposite opinion:
“He has taken the lyrical bubbling of his style from the pseudonyms. He did
not have this before, not in theSermons. What is stated in theChurch Times